The Brothers York

by Thomas Penn

  With Richard’s coronation scheduled for 6 July, the search for legitimation and unity found expression in the inauguration rites that, for all his disavowal of his brother’s reign, Richard had repurposed from Edward IV’s equally confected accession ceremonies of April 1461. On 26 June, at the family’s Thames-side home of Baynard’s Castle, a group of lords, gentlemen and leading London citizens – representatives, so Richard asserted, of the ‘lords spiritual and temporal and the commons of this land’ – looked on as Buckingham presented Richard with a petition setting out his claim to the throne and, on the assembled group’s behalf, formally requested him to take the crown.46 After a dramatic, overlong pause, Richard assented. Next, accompanied by Buckingham and the other petitioners Richard rode in state, sword borne before him, to Westminster Hall. Swathed in royal robes, sceptre in hand, he walked through the crowds, up the half-dozen steps to the marble chair of King’s Bench, where, just as his brother had done, he sat and announced that he would begin to reign, as Richard III.

  Following the usual formulas, Richard promised to rule on behalf of all his subjects, and to be a just and impartial lawgiver. To maintain the rule of law, he told the assembled crowd in a ‘pleasant oration’, was the king’s foremost duty. He wanted to heal divisions and unify the country, to which end he would ‘pardon all offences against him’. Following his peroration the long-standing Yorkist servant Sir John Fogge – one of the Woodvilles’ close associates, who had been extracted from his bolthole in Westminster sanctuary – was led in front of the new king. Richard clasped his hand, a public welcome back into the political fold.47

  In all this, Richard was at pains to paint himself as Edward IV’s natural successor. The allegations of his brother’s bastardy – so loudly trumpeted in recent days – were now quietly dropped from the official narrative. As quickly as he had been erased from the Yorkist line, Edward IV was painted back in, Richard embracing the memory of ‘our dearest brother, late king of England’. Now that the lineal aberration of Edward’s sons had been excised, his family’s line could continue on its serene, ordained path.48 In turn, all those former servants of Edward IV could be assured of Richard’s favour. If any of these men, who had naturally – but, as it turned out, mistakenly – transferred their loyalties to Edward V, were worried about what Hastings’ execution meant for their own relationship with the new regime, Richard wanted to set those worries at ease. His conciliatory handshake with Fogge spoke volumes. Bygones could now be bygones.

  A more than usual sense of his royal mission suffused the new king’s pronouncements and paperwork. Beside him in Westminster Hall sat John Howard, rewarded for his loyalty to Richard with the dukedom of Norfolk that he had quietly craved and which Edward IV had denied him. The royal charter enshrining Howard’s title was exaggeratedly loquacious. God’s eternal radiance shone upon ‘those who share in his goodness’, it pronounced, and Richard III was one of those fortunate creatures. Irradiated by God’s ‘grace and liberality’, he was determined to reward Howard, the most noble and deserving of his subjects.49 Indeed, Richard had been sent by God for the benefit of all England. He would be a perfect king: obedient to the law, he would rule in accordance with all the virtues – or, as the catch-all term had it, to ‘loyaute’. It was a commitment that Richard wore publicly in a new royal motto, ‘loyaute me lie’: ‘loyalty binds me’. His God-given virtues would transmute into a tireless commitment to the common good, and to bringing peace, order, unity and prosperity to England.50

  The bewildering reality was rather different. In Calais, Hastings’ erstwhile deputy John, Lord Dinham – a man who, back in 1459, had helped Edward and Warwick, on the run from Lancastrian forces, escape England to Calais and who had remained staunchly loyal ever since – wrote to Richard for clarification of the new order of things. Could he explain, Dinham asked bluntly, how the new oaths he was now being asked to swear to Richard squared with the oaths he had already made to Edward V? Even though they might not have risked Dinham’s tactlessness, across the country people were asking themselves the same question.51

  In the following days, the new regime started to take shape. As royal favour was redistributed, Buckingham was naturally first in the queue. To go with the grants Richard had already made him, the duke was handed a slew of high offices, including the constableship of England, an assortment of posts previously held by Hastings, as well as a substantial portfolio of duchy of Lancaster lands, which he had long claimed but had been denied him by Edward IV. Together with his coveted dukedom of Norfolk, John Howard was given a swathe of estates through East Anglia, turning him into Richard’s point man in the region, and made admiral of England; his eldest son Thomas Howard, a pugnacious forty-year-old, was made earl of Surrey.52

  That, though, was more or less it. With the emphasis firmly on continuity, there wasn’t a great deal of new patronage to go around. Richard’s childhood friend Francis Lovell was given Hastings’ old post of chamberlain; Richard’s trusted servant Robert Brackenbury was confirmed in the key role of constable of the Tower. Besides that, the changes were minimal – with one further exception.

  William Catesby was made chancellor of the Exchequer, an esquire of the body in Richard’s household and a member of the king’s council; along with these posts, he was given offices and lands in his native Northamptonshire, all of which had been held by his former boss, the man he had betrayed, Lord Hastings.53 Catesby’s meteoric rise from mere lawyer to one of the key architects of the new regime spoke volumes for the critical role he had played in the seismic events of previous weeks, one that had earned him both Buckingham’s and Richard’s intimate confidence and trust.

  Some way down the food chain of favour, Catesby’s Northamptonshire connections received substantial rewards for their part in the rise of the new regime. Prominent among them were the Wake family. Both Roger and his brother William were given lands from Anthony Woodville’s confiscated estates. It was, though, their half-brother John who did best. He was made a gentleman usher of the king’s chamber, an influential and confidential post that involved him being constantly in Richard’s presence and supervising the smooth functioning of the chamber, from the drawing up of servants’ rotas to the greeting of noblemen and diplomats. What made Richard single out John Wake in this way was unclear, though he was, it seemed, especially close to Catesby. Perhaps it had something to do with John’s parentage.

  John Wake had been the product of his father’s second marriage to the earl of Warwick’s troubled young kinswoman Margaret Lucy; his birth, indeed, may well have resulted in her death, aged twenty-eight, in August 1466. During her short chaotic life Margaret, who clearly had something about her, had been constantly harassed by men. After her first husband was killed by her lover at the battle of Northampton, she was stalked for years by an Oxfordshire lawyer, Thomas Danvers. Convinced that he had made a marriage contract with Margaret, which she strongly denied, Danvers had launched legal proceedings against her and, during the notorious court case that followed, spread noxious, defamatory and highly upsetting rumours about her. Around this time, with the intervention of the earl of Warwick, she married his follower Thomas Wake instead.54

  Years later, Thomas More wrote that Margaret Lucy had been one of Edward IV’s mistresses and had borne him a child. The story was hazy: More couldn’t even get her name right, calling her ‘Dame Elizabeth Lucy’. But in other circumstantial respects it made sense. A young, attractive, vulnerable widow throwing herself on the king’s mercy, Margaret Lucy was Edward’s type; moreover, she could conceivably have been the young woman in Warwick’s household that Edward, while staying there, had impregnated some two decades previously, to the earl’s fury.

  Now, in June 1483, Richard’s claim to the throne had focused on proving the invalidity of Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, and the corresponding bastardy of their children. Various stories of marriage precontracts were floating around and, as Richard sought to build a case against his late brother,
it was possible that the identity of John Wake’s mother acquired a fresh significance. Richard’s exceptionally generous treatment of Wake was undoubtedly down to the service he had already done Richard, and his own excellent connections. But it might also have helped that, when need arose, Wake could tell anybody who cared to listen the story of how his mother was once exploited mercilessly by the late king of England.

  Under the direction of Buckingham and Howard, the plans for Richard’s coronation were drawn up. On 27 June, the keeper of the Great Wardrobe, Piers Curteys, reconfirmed in his post by the new regime, signed indentures for work to be completed by 3 July – which, even though he was largely repurposing the work done for the cancelled ceremonies of Edward V, still gave him barely six days to deliver his contract. Artists painted flags, trumpet banners and heralds’ coats-of-arms with brightly coloured oils, fabric setting stiff as the paint dried thick; embroiderers fringed, corded and ‘powdered’ jackets, robes, banners and hangings with finely worked motifs and badges. Some of the work was outsourced to suppliers, from the London haberdasher Thomas Sunnyff, who produced thirteen black bonnets, and the merchant William Melbourne, supplying 13,000 cloth boars, Richard’s badge, to be stitched onto uniforms and handed out; to the Lucchese Ludovico Bonvisi, who supplied fine gold-woven damasks and ‘baudekin’, the silk brocade named after Baghdad, its place of origin.55

  Also specified in Curteys’ indentures was the customary list of ‘liveries’: the distribution of fine textiles and clothes to all those attending the coronation, guests and servants alike. Compiled by Richard in consultation with ‘the lords of his most honourable council’ and drawn up with acute attention to fine gradations of rank, it also evinced solicitude for Edward IV and Elizabeth’s recently bastardized children. The three-year-old Bridget, sick and unable to attend the ceremony, was supplied with down-stuffed pillows and pillowcases of fine Holland cloth. Another of their offspring, though, was named among the honoured guests: the recently deposed Edward V, now styled ‘lord Edward, son of late King Edward the Fourth’.

  The clothes to be supplied to ‘lord Edward’ were opulent and extensive, virtually a new wardrobe in itself: eight gowns, each made of various colours of damask, velvet and satin; and a variety of eye-catching accessories, including thirteen bonnets, five hats, six pairs of gloves and seven pairs of shoes made of the softest Spanish leather. His place in the royal procession was indicated by the two pairs of gold spurs provided, and the nine horse harnesses of velvet and silk, garnished with buttons of Venetian gold. He was to be accompanied by seven henchmen, close servants, dressed in black doublets and gowns of quartered green and white.56

  Less than a week before the pre-coronation ceremonies were due to start, Richard and his advisers were working on the assumption that the attendance of ‘lord Edward’ would symbolize the new spirit of unity which the new regime aimed to engender. His presence at the rites would be the most powerful, most persuasive symbol of all. If he was prepared to acknowledge Richard III as king, so too, it was clearly hoped, would all those whose loyalties still lay with Edward IV’s children.

  Nevertheless, Richard was taking no chances. Security around the forthcoming ceremonies would be exceptionally tight. In the first days of July, his northern forces, some four thousand men under the command of the earl of Northumberland and Richard Ratcliffe, arrived in the capital: Richard greeted them bareheaded as a sign of respect. The troops’ presence had the desired effect. Helmeted, heavily armed men, they seemed to some to possess superhuman strength, ‘with hands and arms of iron’ – although, muttered one Londoner disparagingly, they were ‘very evil apparelled’, fitted out in rusty and ill-maintained armour. As Richard imposed a 10 p.m. curfew and banned the carrying of unlicensed weapons, his men took up positions throughout the city and its suburbs, detachments stationed at crossroads, gates and other strategic points ‘for safeguard of the king’s person’. If anybody tried anything, Richard was prepared.57

  Early on the morning of 6 July Richard and his wife, Anne Neville, emerged from Westminster Hall. Visions in crimson cloth-of-gold, their trains borne respectively by Buckingham and Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond, they walked barefoot along a path of red cloth to the adjacent abbey, their approach heralded by blaring trumpets and a train of clerics, noblemen, knights and civic representatives, the crowds held back by heavy security. Entering the packed abbey, its interior swathed in rich cloth, they climbed the steps to the specially constructed stage where their thrones awaited them. There, they were anointed and crowned, Archbishop Bourchier setting St Edward’s crown on Richard’s head with a murmured ‘coronet te deus’, just as he had done with Edward IV, in the same spot, almost exactly twenty-two years before.58 Richard recited the ancient coronation oaths with fervour. Wanting all his subjects to know what they could expect from him, he had the oaths translated into English, for the first time.59 Characteristically, Richard was obsessed with these ideals of good government: during his reign, he would return to the oaths again and again.

  That afternoon, the guests filed through Westminster Yard, its conduits running with red wine, and into the hall for the wedding feast. Running the length of the cavernous space were four tables, the seating plan done, as customary, according to strict precedence. At 4 p.m., England’s new king and queen were announced. Richard and Anne took their places at King’s Bench, now transformed into a banqueting table, on their left a sideboard glinting with gold plate; with servants hovering attentively, the ceremonies were directed from his horse by John Howard, revelling in his new place in the regime. The feast unfolded in a succession of extravagant dishes paraded triumphantly through the hall, the arrival of each course announced by a phalanx of thirty trumpeters. Richard accepted the obeisance of the king’s champion Robert Dymmock and, in response to the heralds’ customary shouts of largesse, tipped them extravagantly. In between courses, as minstrels played, he chatted attentively with guests, a picture of gracious, regal informality. The royal socializing went on late into the evening; a ‘void’ of ‘wafers and hippocras’ – sweet cakes and spiced wine – signalled the end of the feast.

  In the gathering darkness, a stream of servants bearing flaming torches processed into the hall. The assembled lords rose and, one by one, filed past Richard making obeisance. Then the party broke up into the July night, guests making their torchlit ways ‘where it liked them best’: Richard and Anne, surrounded by a cluster of lords, into the palace and their apartments; London’s dignitaries through Westminster’s silent streets, following the curve of the river east, back to the silent, curfewed city.60

  That evening, in the privacy of his chamber, Richard perhaps reflected that things had gone as well as they possibly could have done. The guest list had been a reflection of the Yorkist unity towards which he aspired. There had been a few obvious absences. Elizabeth Woodville had refused to emerge from sanctuary; her sister Katherine, Buckingham’s long-suffering wife, wasn’t invited – though this was probably more a reflection of their sullen marriage than anything political. Others, like John Morton, sent far from London to Buckingham’s secure Welsh castle of Brecon, were behind bars.61 But more or less all England’s nobles had been present, along with seventy knights. The vast majority of his brother’s men had become Richard’s own: from the late king’s éminence grise Sir Thomas Montgomery, to Sir George Brown and Sir William Parr, Edward’s former master of horse Sir John Cheyne, his chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Thomas Thwaites, and Thomas St Leger, the chamber servant who had married Anne of York and in the process had become Edward’s – and Richard’s – brother-in-law.62 Even Lord Stanley was there, having recovered from the fracas in the council chamber a few weeks before – all smiles, his cut head healed, no harm done. Stanley’s dominance in the northwest made him a crucial node in any English king’s government – and, if not onside, a potential threat. Accordingly, both he and his wife Lady Margaret Beaufort had occupied prominent places in the coronation ceremonial: Stanley walking in f
ront of the king carrying the great mace of state; Margaret bearing Queen Anne’s train.63

  Quite how much this reflected loyalty to the new regime was unclear. Most people were in London anyway, having arrived for another coronation entirely. Invited to Richard’s crowning, people were expected to stay. Leaving would have been unwise.

  One sign of the new regime’s insecurity was a glaring absence from the coronation guest list. Barely a week before, a delivery of fine clothes had been sent to the Tower for Edward V, ‘lord Edward’, in anticipation of his attendance. But in the meantime, Richard had changed his mind. When it came to the coronation itself, the boy wasn’t there. There were rumours of a plot to break both princes out of the Tower, which in turn prompted a change in their security arrangements: they were, it was said, ‘holden more strength’. It clearly wasn’t a good time for Edward V – a living, breathing rebuke to Richard’s claim to the throne – to be paraded at his uncle’s coronation.

  People started to grow anxious about the boys. Where before they could be seen playing in the Tower gardens and doing archery practice, now they no longer appeared outside. Their faces were seen at the barred windows of their apartments with less frequency as the days went on. Finally, they were no longer seen at all.

  Around this time, most of the household servants that Edward V had been allowed to keep with him were dismissed. According to one of his remaining attendants, his doctor John Argentine, the boy, increasingly agitated, had developed the habit of confessing his sins daily, ‘like a victim preparing for sacrifice’.

  The man to whom Argentine talked was a black-habited Augustinian friar named Domenico Mancini. A cultured man, steeped in fashionable humanist learning, Mancini had moved north from his native Rome to Paris, looking for work. Arriving in England sometime towards the end of 1482 – sent, possibly, by a French government increasingly worried about a vengeful Edward IV’s plans to invade France – he had stayed and, fascinated and appalled by the political upheavals that had followed Edward’s death, tried to make sense of what he was witnessing.